Frustration

Frustrating. There are other words for it, but frustrating is the one that keeps coming back to mind in the post mortem of Everton's second successive goalless draw.

Frustrating. There are other words for it, but frustrating is the one that keeps coming back to mind in the post mortem of Everton's second successive goalless draw.

If last Sunday's game against Tottenham represented a missed opportunity to jump into second place after the Blues had weathered the first-half storm from Andre Villas-Boas' men but failed to capitalise once they had seized this initiative, this trip to the Premier League's bottom club offered a chance to re-establish momentum.

Granted, there aren't supposed to be any easy points in the Premier League these days, not even against a side who had lost seven consecutive matches and failed to keep a clean sheet since returning to the top flight. But, having established an iron grip on this match, racking up an impressive 72% of the possession, the obvious conclusion would have been that the three points were there for the taking if Everton could just put enough together in the final third to score.

As it was, they managed just two shots on target in 90-plus minutes and, were it not for an astonishing miss by Kagisho Dikgacoi and the squandering of another gilt-edged opportunity by Jerome Thomas when he was clean through in a one-on-one confrontation with Tim Howard, Roberto Martinez might have spent his post-match interviews expaining away a defeat rather than merely trying to draw positives from a bemusing blank scoreline.

Again, with all due acknowledgement to the no-easy-games refrain, this was a game in which Martinez could have afforded a little attacking adventure, some freer abandon than was the case last weekend against a strong Spurs team with their sights on the Champions League. His starting XI – and the shape of it – was a little conservative, though, with Leon Osman preferred again to Ross Barkley and Kevin Mirallas, again pinned against the right touchline, whether by choice or instruction, was again a peripheral influence on proceedings orchestrated almost entirely by Everton.

The Belgian continues to be an enigma under a manager renowned for his attacking instincts and his detachment and the general lack of white jerseys flooding forward in support of attacks left Romelu Lukaku looking very isolated at the head of a rigid 4-5-1 formation. The big striker had arguably his poorest display since joining on loan from Chelsea, partly because his touch seemed to desert him on a number of occasions, but mostly because of a worrying (given Everton's dominance) paucity of service.

The moment in the 12th-minute when Osman's sliced shot flew a foot in front of him before he could properly react was as close as Lukaku would come to adding to his five Premier League goals for Everton this season, while Mirallas would provide the only other moment of excitment in an increasingly turgid first half when he forced a low save from Speroni after cutting in from the left flank and despatching a shot towards the bottom corner.

Those moments aside, the half was characterised by plenty of ponderous Everton passing across the middle of the park and between the central defensive pairing of Syvain Distin and Phil Jagielka interpersed occasionally the kinds of quick-footed interchanges that have been at the heart of the Blues' best moments this season. The whole tempo of Everton's play was painfully slow and neither Gareth Barry nor James McCarthy seemed all that keen to break out of their defensive midfield posture to offer support in the final third.

As if all of that wasn't frustrating enough, the Blues were hampered by awful delivery from the flanks, with Mirallas and Leighton Baines the chief culprits. Baines, in particular, looked as though he'd traded his laser-sighted boots for club feet, the England international putting on arguably his worst display in recent memory.

It made for painful viewing, especially as Palace looked wracked by the fear engendered by such a prolonged run of defeats and the loss of the manager who had steered them back into the top flight last season. The hosts were gradually emboldened by Everton's lack of guile and offensive threat and, thanks largely to the vision of Barry Bannan and the energy of Thomas, they managed to fashion the two best chances before half time.

First Dikgacoi found himself unmarked in the Everton box as the ball was flighted in but he somehow managed to steer it away from goal when a header on target would surely have beaten Howard. Then, Thomas took advantage of space in front of him to line up a curled effort from 20-plus yards but was denied by a flying one-handed save by the American goalkeeper.

With hopes that Martinez had delivered the kick up the backside needed at half-time, the travelling fans applauded the Blues back onto the field for the second half and, briefly, there was in increased urgency about them that suggested they would set about in earnest the task of claiming three vital points. Any head of steam they tried to build up dissipated, though, as the pace of their game slowed and, again, it was Palace who should have broken the deadlock when Thomas sprung the offside trap. His attempt to chip Howard drifted into the side-netting, however, and the Blues' goal remained intact.

Martinez responded by withdrawing Osman and Mirallas in favour of Barkley and Gerard Deulofeu with 55 minutes gone. The introduction of two direct, preciocious young substitutes seemed, at the time, like exactly the kind of bold move that Everton's performance needed and while it did have the effect of adding some life to the team going forward, it did not provide the all-important breakthrough.

Deulofeu came closer than anyone to scoring a winner, picking up Lukaku's neat lay-off in the 76th-minute but he was quickly closed down by two Palace defenders as he bore down on Speroni's goal. It was a familiar tale for much of the afternoon; the home side's defence put in a terrific shift that certainly contributed to Everton's frustration and they deserve enormous credit for preserving the clean sheet for caretaker boss, Keith Millen.

Their hard work was nearly undone from the corner that Deulofeu won in that attack, but Jagielka's header looped back across goal and bounced off the face of the crossbar where Distin could only nod it wide.

The sense of urgency that Everton had lacked for so much of this encounter finally emerged in the final 10 minutes but proved to be too little, too late, and their impetus was frequently checked by scrappy and deliberate fouls by the opposition defence. Baines fired one direct free kick disappointingly into the defensive wall, Deulofeu despatched another set-piece delivery onto a defender's head as the clock ticked down and the young Spaniard almost produced a moment of magic in stoppage time but whipped a shot a yard or so the wrong side of the post from the far side of the area.

On a day weekend when Chelsea dropped points at home, both Tottenham and Manchester City lost and Manchester United gained ground by beating Arsenal, another two dropped points represented a hugely frustrating return. Victory, had Everton been able to achieve it on the back of a dominant but toothless display, would have seen them sitting fourth instead of sixth. And the "what-ifs" extend back to last Sunday where, had they beaten Spurs and coupled it with a win at Selhurst Park, the Blues would be in second, a point off the summit.

Football doesn't work like that, of course, and heart should be taken from the fact that two below-par performances still yielded two points and that the Blues are well in touch with the pack chasing a top-four finish 11 games into the season. The feeling gnawing away that we could have easily won this by throwing everything we had at Palace with the kind of intensity and vigour of those last ten minutes or so will rankle for a fortnight over the international break but can easily be banished by victory over Liverpool in the Goodison derby. Martinez should be doing everything he can in the meantime to oil that attacking machine and get his troops geed up for what could be a very important match in Everton's season.

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